Tag Archives | Ukraine

What interests me about the Roy Moore scandal is not so much the actual scandal. “Grandstanding politician abuses his position to get away with creepy sexual behavior” is a story as old as politics itself. What is more interesting is one particular line of reasoning being used to make excuses for Moore. Here it is […]

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution that set off the long global reign of terror of Communism. (For obscure reasons having to do with the outdated calendar used in Russia at the time, the October Revolution actually happened in November, and the Soviet Union traditionally celebrated it on November 7.) A century […]

Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations does its best to form a synthesis out of Steve Bannon’s nationalism and George W. Bush’s foreign policy—but it’s not exactly a coherent combination, and we can already see its blind spots. It has been a bit odd to see Bush-era neoconservatives applauding Trump’s speech, but it’s easy […]

British athlete James Cracknell was recently caught citing North Korea and Cuba as examples of how to “get a handle on obesity”—which both regimes have done by starving their people. .@jamescracknell says North Korea is one of only two countries in the world that has “a handle on obesity” pic.twitter.com/A71191QRCJ — Sky News (@SkyNews) April […]

The Road from Etchasketchistan, Part 2 A few years ago, I compared the state of our foreign policy debate to the fictional country of Etchasketchistan. It is as if the foreign policy establishment have been turned upside down and shaken, resetting the alignments that have held since 9/11, and in some cases since the end […]

Can we get past the “we have to understand the discontent that gave rise to Trump” stage of the Republican primary and move on to the “this dangerous buffoon can’t be allowed anywhere near the White House” stage? I ask because Vladimir Putin just weighed in on the US election and basically endorsed Trump, calling […]

President Obama’s foreign policy is adrift, but there’s one good way to bring it back into focus. He needs to appoint a “czar,” someone decisive and results-oriented, someone who will take this whole Syria debacle and give it direction and control. But you know, if you’re going to choose someone for a position modeled on […]

For those who skipped Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last night—and I know it was a lot of you—here is the shorter version. That’s right, President Obama’s main theme was to declare how awesome it is to live in the wonderful new era of peace and prosperity that no one but him has […]

We’ve already counted down the top stories of 2014. But what can we say about what’s likely to happen in the new year? What are the big stories to look for in 2015? As the old saying goes, predictions are hard, especially about the future. The biggest stories are usually the things we can’t predict. […]

Top Stories of the Year: #2 Some of us have been warning for years that President Obama is undermining all the pillars of US foreign policy, which would lead to disaster. This second biggest story of this year is that the disaster has arrived. America’s foreign policy collapsed in many small ways, and in two […]